Proton Pump Inhibitors and Kidney Disease

News came out recently about more dastardly side-effects from taking proton pump inhibitors.

PPIs are a class of drugs used to treat symptoms of heartburn. Whether you get them over-the-counter or by prescription, these drugs were never meant to be a long-term fix, yet most people take these medications on a daily basis.

Long-term effects of taking PPIs daily

In 2015, I talked about all of the data released indicating the correlation between consuming PPIs and dementia. The latest news now shows that people taking these drugs are at a 20-50% greater risk of developing kidney disease.

You think your heartburn is bad? Have you ever seen a dialysis patient? I guess the good news is that you’ll forget how good life was before losing kidney function.

So many things disturb me about this. Let’s start off with the fact that things like Prevacid, Prilosec and Zantac used to only be available by prescription. Remember when doctors gave advice about how to treat heartburn instead of writing a 'script for the symptoms? If you’ve taken PPIs, you might not.

These were never meant to be a cure or a long-term solution.

What happens when you address the problem rather than the symptoms?

I’m one of those people that used to take Prilosec daily. I couldn’t imagine going a few days without it.

But a funny thing happened when I eliminated sugar from my diet... my heartburn went away.

I mean, like, gone. No burps, no acid reflux, no burning. Nothing. I cured myself.

I was no longer treating the symptoms. The symptoms were my body’s way of telling me to get myself together and start handling my business.

When I finally listened, my body began thanking me with a daily reprieve from heartburn.